BUSINESS JOURNAL - EXCLUSIVE REPORTS From the November 22, 2002 print edition

Jeanne Lang Jones - Staff Writer

A new museum is on the drawing board for Seattle to help Cambodian refugees in this country remember their homeland.

Seattle has one of the largest concentrations of Cambodian immigrants in the United States, and about half of the state's approximately 20,000 émigrés live in the Puget Sound area, said Dara Duong, president of the newly formed nonprofit Cambodian American Foundation.

Duong and others aim to raise $1.5 million dollars to establish the Killing Field Memorial and Cultural Museum here to commemorate the 2 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge during Pol Pot's regime. He said it will be easier for Cambodian immigrants living in the United States and Canada to visit Seattle than travel overseas to memorial sites in Cambodia.

The proposed Killing Fields and Cultural Museum will be patterned after the Holocaust museums that commemorate the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis.

Additionally, the museum will include Cambodian cultural artifacts, since the slaughter of many of the country's artists by the Khmer Rouge has made it more difficult to maintain the country's cultural traditions, Duong said.

Duong is hoping to obtain temporary space for some exhibits in the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle's International District, but he wants the memorial museum to have its own building eventually.

Duong, who was just 4 years old when the Khmer Rouge took over his country, spent 13 years living in various refugee camps along the Cambodian border before emigrating to Seattle in the fall of 1999. He has been in contact with the Tuol Sleng memorial in Cambodia, which has agreed to share copies of some of its documents and photographs with the proposed Seattle museum.

The two-story house where Dara Duong lives is low and rectangular, one of many broad-shouldered family homes overlooking the forlorn streets beyond SeaTac's Pacific Highway South. An American flag leans over the front yard in silent salute. It's a scene so typically suburban, so brimming with new-life promise, that it's hard to imagine the bad memories buried beneath its surface.

Through the door, down a few stairs, and suddenly you're in a bright, carpeted room that looks nothing like a garage and everything like a carefully arranged exhibition. The room is solemnly quiet, nothing but the sound of a whirring VCR. A small table offering bite-sized cookies and candy bars is a nod to visitors' comfort, but there is nothing comfortable, really, about the surroundings.

Images of atrocity and war blanket the walls. Most arresting are the rows of shocked faces, staring as if pictures from some grotesque yearbook — mug shots of the doomed, all with one thing in common: They were about to be killed.

Duong, a 32-year-old vocational counselor, first saw these faces in 1999, when he returned to the country he'd left as a boy. His father had been killed there. His grandfather had been killed there. He vaguely remembered long days of forced labor. Still, what he saw at Cambodia's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh shocked him.

For the first time, he absorbed what had really happened. As a child assigned to the countryside to collect rice paddies, he hadn't grasped the magnitude of the suffering perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.

"When I saw the museum, I felt all this suffering in my mind," he says. "I saw the reality. I asked myself, 'How could they do this?' "

So many people. So many people. He wasn't the only one with scars. And yet, he knew so few would ever see what he was seeing, would remember or realize the horror of those years. Duong thought: I need to do something.

Now, his garage is filled with dozens of stark images and reminders of the genocide that claimed 2 million lives from 1975 to 1979. The beaten, mangled victims of torture and execution. The mass graves, the austere bearings of Khmer Rouge henchmen. On a tiny television in the corner, labor-camp video footage of dusty, black-cloaked slaves shuffling in the heat.

"For the time being, we do not have a big building," Duong says, though Seattle's Wing Luke Museum is one future possibility. "This is a start. I'm very happy we can do something."

He is understated in nearly every way, short and neatly dressed, reminiscent of Sal Mineo in "Rebel Without A Cause." He calls his cramped display, not yet open to the public, the Killing Fields Museum. Most of it he did himself. There were many trips to Kinko's and hours spent working with glue and display boards. "It's just a story that happened in that time," he says simply.

But there's no mistaking the passion that drives his effort. "We had to tell people what happened. Students say, 'Where is Cambodia? What is that?' They don't know about the genocide. We want to help this not happen again in another country."

It's a noble effort, one not without complications. The Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton area is home to the nation's third-largest concentration of Cambodian immigrants, among them survivors of the genocide and, in one of those inevitabilities of wartime upheaval, some of its likely perpetrators as well. For that reason, he acknowledges some worry over his safety. "About 3 percent," is how he puts it.

Not everyone will like his idea. But in it, Duong says, are lessons everyone should learn, questions everyone should ask.

On one table, in front of pictures of the real thing, he has assembled the kinds of implements once used for torture: a hammer, shovel, sickle and daggers.

A splash of color beckons from the dreary sea of black and white images — renderings of an artist destined for execution, spared because he knew how to draw. His illustrations show babies pried from crying mothers' hands, sleeping prisoners crowded like cigars across hard floors.

But looking at these walls, the image that troubles him most is the photo of a mother and her few-weeks-old baby. Like thousands of others about to die, she sat looking at a camera for the last time, another notch in the Khmer Rouge record books. "Before they killed them, they took pictures of them," Duong says.

But her child had no understanding of what was about to happen. Why? Duong wonders. Why would people commit such atrocities? "This museum," he says, "will be a witness to the world."

"Some don't even want to go back to the homeland," says Seattle's Cambodian consul, Daravuth Huoth. "It's just a nightmare.

But so far, says Lyban Sawn of the Khmer Community of Seattle/King County, Duong has not done enough as a relative newcomer to woo community leaders and ensure the effort's long-term survival. "This is a big project — it's not that easy."

He points to Chicago, where proponents of the planned Cambodian-American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial worked to build conceptual support given the emotional stakes. Aware the community was limited financially, they instead solicited brainpower and volunteers, and the $1.8 million effort is more than halfway toward its goal.

Duong admits community support will take time. For now, he's seeking corporate sponsorship and federal grants. In addition to Huoth's support, he says his idea has earned endorsement from the Cambodian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Cambodian representative to the United Nations.

The most promising nod, however, has come from the Wing Luke Museum, which has expressed interest in incorporating Duong's collection into its own expansion, also several years away.

Wing Luke director Ron Chew says Duong's effort is much like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., with potential to be powerful and moving. "It's a traumatic experience to see and witness what happened," he says, "but history can be an effective teacher."

With history's participants still around, it's a delicate operation. But such horrific events demand healing and discussion, not ignorance or avoidance, he says.

Huoth says he lent his endorsement to the exhibit provided it went beyond genocide to promote Cambodian culture. (One wall of Duong's garage exhibit includes Cambodian art, religion and traditional clothing.)

"Now that we're moving into the 21st century, we're looking forward, not back," Huoth says. "We look back as a lesson. But in order to move forward, you have to educate. What is Cambodia? It's not just a

piece of disaster. "Some people might like to see it. Some people would like to see it disappear. Some people feel hate, anger. Some people have never been there. The thing is, it never dies — it just keeps popping up every once in a while."

Duong says some people already have questioned the need for such an exhibit. Why not show evidence to the contrary, they ask? To which he answers: Show it to me.

Images of men, women and children, young and old, identified only by numbers, create a haunting landscape across a museum’s walls. These individuals were among the nearly 2 million Cambodians killed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge during the mid-1970s.

Dara Duong escaped the genocide that took away four members of his family, but the memory of it did not escape him. His efforts have contributed to the founding of the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial — the first of its kind in the United States. It celebrated its grand opening May 14 in Seattle’s White Center neighborhood.

About a year ago, the initial development of Duong’s vision began to take shape in his garage. There, he began gathering artifacts and film in hopes of one day creating a museum that would pay tribute to those who lost their lives, as well as to Cambodia’s art and history.

The museum "will be a great place for the Cambodian community to come and study about their own culture, tradition, and also to learn about their identity," Duong said. "I hope that through this place, it can change people’s lives, especially among the Cambodian generation here."

One of the primary sections of the museum describes the Killing Fields, the mass burials of the victims executed by the Khmer Rouge. Before being executed, the victims were blindfolded, and then tortured. Photos of the victims’ skeletal remains, with blindfolds still across their eyes, were among the images displayed.

Much of the museum’s funding has come from Duong himself. He himself acquired much of the museum’s photos and artifacts through the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which supplied the images of the victims prior to their execution, among other artifacts related to the genocide.

Duong also received assistance from Ryker Labbee, an amateur photographer who spent time in Cambodia. Labbee donated photos of some of the natives, as well as images of temples and traditional dancers.

"There’s a lot of rich history in this country (Cambodia), and exposing kids to that is a good thing," Labbee said. "Having a presence in White Center will be good because the Cambodian community is obviously centered in this area."

More than 12,000 Cambodian Americans live in the Greater Seattle area alone — the third-highest population among metropolitan areas in the United States, according to the 2000 census.

In addition to the Killing Fields exhibits, the museum also carries an array of historical and cultural artifacts. Models of traditional forms of transportation and musical instruments are among those displayed, many of which are still used in the country today.

Kosal Thoeun, Duong’s brother-in-law, was too young to recall the horrors of the Cambodian genocide, but he knows of the sufferings his parents endured. He has helped with the museum’s development since its beginning and appreciates how much the museum has added to his understanding of his native land.

"Before I never thought the Khmer Rouge was all that cruel, until you actually sit there and read it ... you realize a lot of things."

Many of these readings can be found in a third section of the museum, the library and video room, which houses actual books from Cambodia, and will feature showings of Cambodian documentaries.

Many of the library’s books originated from Cambodia, and they were what caught the eye of University of Washington alum Phatry Pan. During college, Pan had been actively involved in the Cambodian student association.

"To see this, it makes me feel good to know that there is an effort to teach the general public about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge," Pan said. "For those affected by the Cambodian genocide, I think this museum acts as part of the healing process."

Within the next five years, Duong hopes to raise upwards of $2 million to expand the museum. He hopes to recruit more volunteers who can offer technical support, namely to improve the museum. Financial support, he noted, is the biggest challenge.

Pan hopes the museum will touch the lives of not only Cambodian Americans, but the wider community as well.

"The museum promotes and takes pride in the Cambodian heritage and culture," Pan said. "To the general public at large, it will serve as an educational tool."

Anna Lwanga is a student in the University of Washington School of Communications News Laboratory. She can be reached at scpnwan@nwlink.com.

Dara, founder of the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, shares his personal story how the Khmer Rouge stole his father away. "I was three years old, my mom told me they took him one night to a meeting, but he never returned," said Dara." I lost my father, which is the most important person in my life, because I didn't get a chance to know and recognize him."

Dara's story resembles many stories I have heard about the Khmer Rouge and their so-called "nightly meetings." I left Cambodia at a tender age of four. I was too little to have memories of my own, too little to know the full extent of my parents' struggle, and their near death escape into safety Just like many young Cambodian-Americans, I was sheltered from the truth. I have heard stories told by family members, by older Khmer adults, but they weren't my own personal members, so they always seemed surreal.

These dream-like stories kept me at a safe distance. However, as I walked into the Cambodian Museum all the stories of my past came rushing at me. They were no longer transparent. They had formulated into something tangible and real. My protection was removed and I had to face the truth.

Dara candidly shared his reason for developing the museum. He said, "I want the Cambodian youth to be grateful for their parents and grandparents' sacrifice to get them to America." Dara described the reasoning behind the layout for the museum. He said,"At the entrance you see Cambodia now, how people live nowadays, then you continue to see Cambodia's rich history, culture, artwork and sculptures."

"We are from a wonderful country that created great things like the Angkor Wat," said Dara. "I want Khmer people, especially the youth, to be proud of their heritage.

In the center of the museum there is a stage where films and documentaries are shown. At the back of the room there is a library where visitors can sit and read about old and current events in Cambodia.

In another section separated by bamboo-like gates, you find the memorial for the victims of the Killing Fields. This was the hardest area for me to enter, because I heard about the "pictures." It was scary and painful to look at the faces of the victims. Their expressions were sullen or blank. Some had a lot of emotion in their

eyes, although they were not allowed to show it on their faces. Many were my age when I left the country, little three to five-year-old boys and girls. Some of the victims were older adults, men, women and teenagers.

As I looked on, I thought about what they must have been thinking when their pictures were snapped. I tried to envision the endless tortures and coercion they faced by the Khmer Rouge. And finally, the march they endured as they walked towards their death. When I could no longer stand their pain, Dara described his

thoughts about the pictures. He said, "I put them up to honor them, we should not be afraid, they are innocent people, they did nothing wrong."

After my visit to the museum, I realized the museum is not only a place to learn and educate ourselves about Cambodia's past, present and future, but it is a place where we, the community, can go to hear, to learn, to truly listen to "their stories." The Khmer Rouge robbed us from family, relatives, and friends.

The genocide stole nearly two million Cambodians. Although they are gone, the Cambodian Museum allows us to remember.

We cannot undo history, but we can learn from our past. We can make sure this kind of tragedy never happens again. It is important for us to continue to share our stories. When we speak as survivors, we are speaking for two million innocent people. We are carrying on their legacy, our legacy.

To visit the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial or Volunteer, go to Building No. 9809, 16th Ave SW (White Center) in Seattle. The main entrance is in the back.

You may contact, Dara Duong, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors,

at (206) 763-8088 or e-mail him at dara@killingfieldsmuseum.com

Community member Bopha Chan is currently attending the University of Washington to receive a Master's degree in Social Work.

Northwest Asian Weekly - May 22, 2004

Photo by Carol N. Vu for the Northwest Asian Weekly

Dara Duong spent years gathering artifacts in the hopes of one day opening a museum that pays tribute to those who lost their lives in Cambodia’s Killing Fields. Last week, his dream was realized.

Within seconds, he launches into stories about his birthplace and talks about recent photographs of fishermen, vegetable sellers and beaming children in Cambodia. The framed color images line a wall. "It doesn't matter. Young or old," he says. "They can survive."He points to replicas of Hindu and Buddhist figures who have influenced his country.

Duong, a refugee, has brought them back from his trips home.

But what for weeks has been attracting people to this Sixteenth Avenue Southwest museum -- one of the first of its kind in the nation -- is in the back, behind glass shelves and a performance stage and a large video screen.

They are dozens of somber black-and-white mug shots, images of a different sort from the 1970s. Photographs of girls with dark shirts, terrified looks and blunt haircuts. A boy with an upturned, blood-smeared lip.

Gaunt men with short hair, and a few with bug eyes. Arms are tied behind backs. There is the wife of a senior Cambodian government official. Her baby rests in her arms.

The Khmer Rouge, the Communist guerrilla force that battled the Cambodian government, committed some of this planet's worst genocide from 1975 to 1979. About 2 million people, who were perceived as threats, died during this period.

Worldwide, the deaths are known as the Killing Fields. Today, Duong, 33, wants the Pacific Northwest -- as well as younger Cambodian Americans and this country -- to remember what happened.

In May, after getting 1,200 images of the victims from a documentation center in Cambodia, he opened the museum with $10,000 of his own money.

He had displayed dozens of photographs in his SeaTac garage -- and still hasn't posted all of them in the museum.

The Khmer Rouge, he says, had the images taken before the people were tortured and executed with sickles, shovels, hammers, meat cleavers and other instruments. Many of those killed were educated and innocent relatives of Cambodian soldiers.

Duong says the victims were ordered to smile before the camera lens. Only a few did.

Included in the death toll are Duong's grandfather, grandmother, father, aunt and uncle.

This connection fuels his search for why this happened. "I don't want to take revenge," he says. "I just want to have a peaceful mind."

Many in the Seattle area's Cambodian refugee community want the same thing. And perhaps, just for someone to listen and nod in acknowledgment

His collection started after he arrived in the Seattle area in 1999. He is raising $2 million to open a larger museum in Seattle.

He used to work for a counseling service in Seattle's International District but now devotes all of his time to the museum.

He hopes to have a computer database of the victims' biographies. He also wants to write guidebooks for U.S. students.

His wife, he says, once asked him about the images of all the dead people, especially when he kept them in their garage. Many Buddhists believe that the deceased need a proper shrine or monument so their spirits can rest in peace.

He says he told his wife that they were innocent people, and there is nothing to fear.

In the future, he hopes to build a shrine or monument for them.

Tonight, he will travel to Cambodia for three weeks to continue his research. He hopes to ask surviving Khmer Rouge leaders a simple question: Why?

The topic is still sensitive in Cambodia. But, he notes, his question will be in a historical context, not a political one.

As he talks, two men from the area's Cambodian community quietly enter the building. They, too, are refugees.

They have watery eyes and soft voices. A sense of loss lingers, even as they stand here so many miles away, in the Pacific Northwest. Something has been taken from them. And they want it back.

Seattle resident Srey Samreth, 52, gives Duong a photocopied newspaper image of himself in the Cambodian Navy. He is standing next to a U.S. naval attache.

In 1978, at a prison camp in Battambang province, the Khmer Rouge forced him and five prisoners to turn human feces into fertilizer, he recalls. Their quota: 10 tons of fertilizer each month.

The Communist guerrillas eventually slit his compatriots' stomachs, he says, and the men dropped into a pit. He, too, tumbled into the hole, which was actually a mass grave.

But for some reason, the Khmer Rouge spared him. "I thought maybe I did something good. So, I survived," he says, as Duong translates. "Maybe God helped me."

He is wearing a T-shirt with a donkey image and the words: "I lost my ass in Las Vegas."

Without saying a word, Thoeurn Touch of Burien walks straight to the mug shots.

He examines them, looking for his three brothers, who disappeared back home. No luck.

"Some people say they didn't die. I don't know where they are," the 44-year-old says in English.

On this day, he was looking for Western medicine in this neighborhood and saw the museum's sign by accident.

"I want to save my kid here," he says, explaining why he likes life in the United States. "I don't want to see the place where they killed my family."

By the early afternoon, Duong's baby son is awake. Duong cradles him in his arms back near the museum office. His countrymen have left.

The baby looks at his surroundings. Duong, a proud father, just sways back and forth to comfort the newborn. His son is 3 months old. Duong wants his museum to help his own 6½-week-old son, Darell Vatha Duong, and other children "know where they come from."

Linh Thach could look no longer. He had to get out. "It is a true story," he said, stepping into sunlight from the darkness of a low-slung former nightclub. "I am very upset," he said.

Thach, the Seattle Police Department's liaison to the Asian community, was among a few dozen guests Friday at the newly opened Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial. He was reminded that history's lessons can be as painful as they are valuable.

Thach said several of his relatives were murdered during the Khmer Rouge genocide that claimed 2 million Cambodian lives from 1975 to 1979 during the regime of Pol Pot. Looking back is difficult. But he and a companion, Peter Truong, a community-service officer for the King County Sheriff's Office, both said the museum is needed for local Cambodian youth who know little of what their elders endured.

"Young people, especially, can see what the country went through and appreciate what they have in this country," Truong said. "People born here don't know anything about it."

The museum in White Center officially opens to the public today and is the pet project of Dara Duong, a Cambodian refugee. Last fall, Duong quit his job as a counselor at a social-service agency to devote himself full-time to his dream.

Duong's efforts have taken his collection of items documenting the horrors from his cramped garage in SeaTac to a modest, but accessible, location. Before, some doubted the legitimacy of Duong's project. Now, he says, local shop owners are happy to accommodate his donation boxes.

"Before, it was a project based in a garage," he says proudly. "Now it is a real project, and everybody can come see the real history of the killing fields, the real history of Cambodian culture."

The museum features a library focusing on that culture, with some of his 300 books on history, tradition and religion. Another rack is aimed at kids, with youth-oriented, Cambodian pop-culture magazines.

Art and sculptures line boxy, glass shelves along several walls around a stage — a remnant of the location's former life as a nightclub. Duong plans to use the stage for Cambodian youth to perform traditional dance.

But the wounded heart of the place is the Killing Fields Memorial, where images of war and atrocity surround visitors — the mass graves, austere bearings of Khmer Rouge henchmen, rows and rows of terror-stricken faces. They are the morbid mug shots of people about to be executed.

Duong, 33, first saw the faces in 1999 at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, when he returned to the country he had fled as a boy. His father and grandfather both were killed during the genocide. And he vaguely recalls days of forced labor.

Still, the magnitude of the atrocity was so terrible that Duong felt compelled to share the story with the world, so in subsequent trips to Cambodia he brought items home with that intention in mind: photographs, drawings and other evidence of the crimes that defiled his native land.

The work of assembling the collection he mostly has done himself, with glue, display boards and hours spent at copy shops. He has also had help from Ryker Labbee, a well-traveled 30-year-old who met Duong a year ago and has contributed photographs of modern Cambodia to the exhibition.

"Dara's great," Labbee says. "He has a great vision. But he's going to need help."

Duong has spent $10,000, most from his own savings, to prepare what he says is just a seed of what he envisions: a $1.5 million cultural center and museum in a better location. He hopes that might happen within five years.

Duong also says people in the community told him they don't have time to teach their kids about Cambodian culture, about how they came to America. They told him the children don't believe their recountings of the genocide. They told him to open his museum so the young people could see what really happened.

At Friday's invitation-only grand opening, a documentary on the Khmer Rouge played on a large screen while a hammer, shovel and electric wires were mounted on an easel nearby. Items like those were used to torture people.

When Duong first started talking about his project, some worried for his safety: With history's participants still around — including former members of the Khmer Rouge — the genocide is a delicate issue. He told people he makes no judgments; he wants to simply show things as they were and let visitors decide for themselves.

He says he hopes it can be a lesson for everyone, Cambodians and Americans alike. For Cambodian youth, he says, the museum can be a push to get on the right track.

"It's kind of like a message that can help them change," he says.

Thuong Thach, left, and Lem Thach examine photos at Friday's opening of Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial in White Center. Thuong Thach said 30 of his relatives were among those killed, including his wife, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews

MUSEUM AND MEMORIAL

The Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial is at 9809 16th Ave. S.W. in White Center. The museum is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. The entrance is in the back.

For information, call 206-763-8088 or 206-730-7740. You also can visit www.killingfieldsmuseum.com Additional information about the genocide can be found at www.dithpran.org More headlines and info from White Center.

On a dimly lighted stage in a former nightclub, Sam Tea, 25, rapped the last lines of a song he'd written for his parents. Titled "New Day Tomorrow," it spoke of pride and struggle and other elements of the immigrant experience.

"All of us have gone through that, coming up from Cambodia and growing up here," said Tea, a member of Tacoma-based hip-hop group Second Language. "We just want to say we appreciate what our parents have done for us."

One generation, reaching out to another: That was the whole idea behind Cambodian Family Day, which took place yesterday at the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial in White Center.

The center, which opened last May, was the creation of Dara Duong, a Cambodian refugee who lost 30 relatives to the genocide that claimed 2 million Cambodian lives in the late 1970s.

It was 1999 when Duong first returned to the country he'd left as a boy. During a visit to Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, he became aware of just how immense the human tragedy was.

Fearful that Cambodian youths growing up in America were largely unaware of the event, Duong began collecting images and artifacts documenting the genocide in his cramped SeaTac garage, intending to open a museum. Those images — of mass graves and terror-stricken faces of people bound for execution — now form the heart of the arts and culture center.

"Most people in America don't realize the huge and horrible genocide that happened there," says Shamra Harrison, a center board member who visited Cambodia in 2003 and decided she wanted to help Duong educate US. youths about the atrocities. "I was completely shocked this was something I had not heard about when I went to school."

Eventually, Duong envisions a $1.5 million cultural center and museum in a more visible location, but for now it sits along cramped 16th Avenue in White Center with other immigrant-operated businesses.

But it is community as much as education that Duong is after, which is how the second Cambodian Family Day came to be. The only time the community gathers is for Cambodian New Year in April, he said: "After that, everybody falls apart. It's very hard to get connected."

The first family day, held last month, drew 150 people. Aware that generational divides separate traditional elders from the young who embrace American culture, Duong made sure yesterday's lineup included youths performing both traditional arts and music as well as more modern rhythm and blues and hip-hop.

"Education is a two-way process," said Phatry Pan, representing the Rajana Society, a Cambodian arts group based at the University of Washington. "We hope you take what you've learned here today and take it back to the community."

Potluck-style snack foods lined a table near the center's gift shop while the crowd of about 100 mingled and watched the performances from rows of folding chairs. Among them were people such as Barbara Murakami, adoptive parents of Cambodian children who hoped to keep their kids connected with their birth-country identity.

"We want him to learn about his culture," she said of 4-year-old son Lee T. "He kept thinking he was going to Cambodia today."

"We all need to get in touch with our culture," said Sathia "Ted" Chet, a member of the hip-hop group Second Language.

Added band mate Tea: "It's hard to sit back and let it go when you got grandmas and great-grandmas trying to talk to you and all you can say is, 'Yeah.' "